I’ve learned a few lessons in drawing the hard way. Today I want to share the biggest bitch that comes with learning how to draw in an anime or manga style.

Moral of the story, learn volumes first! Hell, do still life drawing and life drawing, focus on the lighting and rendering. If you can render it right, you can draw it right, but if you can only draw it right, you’ll have to unlearn how you see things in order to render it right.

Final Thought:Everyone can draw a circle, square and triangle, especially since it really doesn’t have to be perfect. Therefore, you already know everything about shape needed to start doing still life. The real challenge of still life is to look at something, say an orange for instance, and instead of mentally filling in a shape, circle in this case, to instead see how the contrast between light and shadow is creating that shape. It can be boring, but hang in there and you’ll appreciate it later!

Since about a week into it I ran into a bit of a wall. I’ve been pushing against that wall for a while now, but just can’t seem to surmount it. I just can’t find the FUN. Maybe I’m just too far removed from the genre, but I can’t seem to think of how to make standard platforming straight up fun.

That isn’t to say platforming can’t be fun, just that I can’t drum up a way to make that game and have it be fun. A few ideas have come to mind, though this time I’m trying to start from game play and build from there.

I’ll still likely be using TGB (Torque Game Builder) and therefore 2d assets. No point reinventing the car at this stage. ~.^